FAQ

1. What happens after I place my order?

Our products are made to order. Your order will be cut in our Gloucestershire studio to your selected measurements on the day that you make it and sent out to you in one to two weeks.  

2. What is your return policy?

Your order is returnable and fully refundable within two weeks of receipt provided that the garment shows no sign of damage.

3. What is your repair policy?

Through our LUDO LIFE Repair Service you can send your garment back to us. The same seamstresses who made it in the first place will deconstruct your broken garment and reconstruct it so that it is ready for more life. We are in the process of making this a website feature right now but in the meantime please email us at info@ludopals.com or DM us on Instagram or Myspace to arrange your slot.

 4. What certification do your products have?

Our fabrics are OEKO-TEX Sandard 100 certified. This ensures that every component has been tested and proven to be free of harmful substances. 

5. Why was Caesar assassinated?

This is a question we are asked on an almost yearly basis. Why was Caesar assassinated?

By the Ides of March 44 BC, the Roman senatorial elite’s continually growing discontent with their de facto king had reached its apogee. The Republic, even towards its dying days, had a sour memory of kings. It was the impression of stalwart Republicans that monarchy was the very symbol of negated liberty, and the countless checks and balances within the constitution of the state served the purpose of protecting it against such a relapse. Gaius Julius Caesar, although unquestionably the most extreme, was not the first or only man to break from the Cursus Honorum or from the established societal norms. He was preceded by many such generals whose military skills allowed them increasingly to defy what had been previously thought possible, solely in the name of ambition and rivalry. In fact, one might argue that the competition that had driven the expansion of the Republic was destined to destroy it. That eventually one man would set the bar so high as it could not be matched should have come as no surprise to the Romans, especially when that man had proudly informed them of his regal ancestry. But when this inevitable outcome finally arrived, how would the great state react? By the very nature of Caesar’s rise to power, he had proven himself militarily unchallengeable. The result was that those left idealistically clinging to the long-dead principles of the traditional Republic believed they were left with only one option.

The path for Caesar was cleared by men such as Sulla, Pompey and Crassus. Sulla had at least tried to piece together the remaining fragments of the Republic that he himself had dismantled, but when Pompey and Crassus both marched on Rome in 70 BC, they flung those pieces into an eternal abyss. It could be argued that, at least from the outset, Caesar’s motives to be dictator were benevolent. The mantra of Caesar’s office—rei publicae constituendae—after all suggested a re-establishment of order, for which ‘after a civil war the need was patent.’ The tribunician veto had proved itself too great an obstacle to the sweeping reforms that would have been necessary. The office of dictator therefore seemed an apt choice. The case for stable leadership was strong. Urban violence had ‘discredited the machinery of government and weakened the fabric of the community.’ There were equally acute needs to ‘alleviate food shortages, distribute grain, [and] allocate land’. Caesar was quick to solve some of these problems, namely through his relocation of 80,000 Roman unemployed to the communities he had established in the colonies, in such places as Carthage and Corinth. By doing so, he was able to half the roughly 320,000 people who were reliant on government supplied grain in Rome. In these communities, Caesar passed a truly revolutionary measure, by allowing freedmen to stand for political office. ‘Caesar, like no one else before him, had seriously begun to tackle the obstinate problem of the workless, depressed classes at Rome.’ Caesar may be forgiven for concluding that autocratic rule was necessary, for his initial success had proved him right. Caesar’s status as a patrician marked him as a suitable candidate for such rule, as Ronald Syme has argued: ‘The patricians were loyal to tradition without being fettered by caste or principle. Either monarchy or democracy could be made to serve their ends. Fides, libertas and amicitia were qualities valued by the governing class, by Caesar as by Brutus.’ Caesar’s restoration of the colonies and loyalty to the promises he had made to his soldiers demonstrated his recognition and adherence to these aristocratic principles. However, one all-powerful, decisive man, for all his positive headway, made little sense to those who thought within the context of a Republic.

There was initially a level of tolerance for Caesar, even the arch-Republican Cicero believed it was only he who would be able to revive the former state: ‘This is the programme to which you must devote all your energies: the re-establishment of the constitution, with yourself the first to reap its fruits in profound tranquility and peace.’ However, once Caesar had returned from his brief Spanish campaign in September 45 BC, ‘his behaviour was increasingly arbitrary, and any hopes that might still be entertained of a return to constitutional government must soon have faded.’ The measures themselves and the rapidity that Caesar rushed them through began to alarm the Senators. Suetonius gives us the full extent of these abuses:

Not only did he accept unconstitutional honours, such as life-consulship, a life-dictatorship, a perpetual Censorship, the title ‘Emperor’ put before his name, and the title ‘Father of his Country’ appended to it, also a statue standing among those of the ancient kings, and a raised couch place in the orchestra at the Theatre; but took other honours which, as a mere mortal, he should certainly have refused. These included a golden throne in the Senate House, and another on the tribunal; a ceremonial chariot and a litter for carrying his statue in the religious procession around the Circus; temples, altars and divine images; a priest in his own cult; a new college of Lupercals to celebrate his divinity; and the renaming of the seventh month as ‘July’. Few, in fact, were the honours which he was not pleased to accept or assume.

Cassius Dio, who might have made a good lawyer in another life, judging by his ability to almost invariably be able to account for Caesar’s wrongdoings with less incriminating explanations, predictably maintains that these advances were in fact the doings of the conspirators, aiming to make sure that there was little doubt in the peoples’ minds that Caesar was a tyrant. Irrespective of the reasons why, Caesar made a mockery of the Republican system and undermined the centuries of respect that had been payed to the revered offices, principally ‘by choosing magistrates several years ahead, decorating ten former praetors with the emblems of consular rank, and admitting to the Senate men of foreign birth’. The most unabashedly disrespectful act in this assault on the Senate’s respect came in the last few hours of 45 BC. One of the incumbent consuls died, and after being requested to do so, Caesar appointed an associate, Gaius Caninius Rebilus, to the post. Cicero joked: ‘At one o'clock Caesar announced the election of a consul to serve until 1 January—which was next morning. So I can inform you that in Caninius’ consulship no one had lunch. Still, nothing untoward occurred while he was consul: such was his vigilance that throughout his consulship he did not sleep a wink. Yes, you may laugh, but you aren't here. If you were, you could not help weeping. What if I told you everything? There are countless similar instances.’ Meanwhile, the Dictator was amassing large fortunes through acquiring the rights ‘to sell, grant or divide up the estates of his adversaries.’ His use of these powers to essentially give Servilia—Marcus Brutus’s mother—an estate at public auction caused Cicero to jokingly remark: ‘It was even cheaper than you think, because a third (tertia) had been discounted.’ As if these humiliations to the state were not in themselves audacious enough, Caesar used his henchmen to carry them out in his absence. Men such as Balbus, who ‘ruled his native Gades like a monarch’ and, in Rome, ‘exercised a power greater than most Roman senators.’ The prospect of being governed by Caesar’s henchmen whilst he was not present, but thousands of miles way, insulted the pride of the nobles most. The situation by this point had become so dire as to momentarily rupture Cassius Dio’s near-continuous stream of praise for the Dictator, causing him to admit that ‘although he pretended to shun the title (of king), in reality he desired to assume it.’ Suetonius believed the aggregate of these advancements to ‘justify the conclusion that he deserved assassination.’ The Gracchi’s violent ends almost a century before must not be forgotten in these events, for they had set a precedent: that unrest stemming from an individual could be halted and reversed through his murder.

The political machinations of an ambitious nobleman had little negative effect on the proletariat of Rome; it was his fellow senators that had something to lose: ‘the plotters were well aware that under Caesar’s autocracy their opportunities for financial gain and political power would vanish, and the prestige of the Senate would be obliterated by further dilatations.’ He had already celebrated four triumphs (the matter of over whom Caesar had been eager to make patent), propelling him ahead of any man in his social vicinity. That long enjoyed aristocratic competitive pursuit of military gloria, looked to have met its end. These fears came to a head when the Senators heard news that Caesar resolved to launch a Parthian campaign. There existed reasonable grounds for such a campaign. The Parthians had afflicted a humiliating defeat upon the Romans when they had killed Crassus and Caesar had proven himself to be the Roman military leader par excellence, throughout both the Gallic and Civil wars he ‘had forged his army into a more powerful, efficient and responsive martial instrument than the ancient world had ever seen before.’ However, the Senate understood that if Caesar were to be successful against the Parthians, ‘he would be a king without a doubt.’ The Parthian issue was made all the more poignant when, as Cassius Dio explains, ‘a report, got abroad, that the priests known as the Quindecimviri were spreading the report that the Sibyl had said that the Parthians would never be defeated in any other way than by a king, and were consequently going to propose this title be granted to Caesar.’ The two principle conspirators were directly effected ‘because a vote would be demanded of the magistrates among whom were Brutus and Cassius, owing to the importance of the measure, and they neither dared to oppose it nor would submit to remain silent’. Those implicated in the conspiracy were under serious pressure in a situation in which they were now forced to act, in either their favour or Caesar’s. When Caesar announced that he would depart on 18 March ‘its imminence brought to a climax the acute discontent which had been growing amongst the Roman nobility.’ There may have existed patriotic motives amongst some of the conspirators, but Richard Smith has argued that the ‘class hatred of fifty years had taken its toll’: that ‘Rome had only selfish, petty politicians, determined to use their power for their own purposes.’ Ronald Syme corroborates this view, writing that those involved ‘stood, not merely for the traditions and the institutions of the Free State, but very precisely for the dignity and the interests of their own order.’ Cassius Longinus was partially driven by his failure to secure the post of the Praetorship of the city, for this he worried not about oppression, but instead ‘hated the ruler’. Marcus Brutus—the most famous of the assassins—is said to have actually been a late comer to the conspiracy, but, as Caesar remarked, ‘whatever he intends, he intends vehemently’, thus once embroiled, his role was a significant one, even if it was for its symbolism. Brutus is a good example of the individual protestations that could be found amongst the conspirators. Caesar’s ‘public and notorious’ amorous relations with his mother, the Dictator’s failure to appoint Brutus to the post of proconsul of Macedonia, or simply the lamenting graffiti that began to appear in the city—‘O that we had a Brutus now!’. These count for some of the many personal reasons that Brutus and his numerous allies may have had. But, if these men could ever be proved to have been acting purely in the interest of the Republic, could they be considered selfless? ‘The Republic that the conspirators believed in was one that maintained the privilege of the senatorial elite.’ Maybe they understood what the consequences might be, maybe they did not, but in one way or another, it was for motives of their own selfish gain that they ‘threw the city into disorder when at last it possessed a stable government.’

The war on which Caesar was about to embark may well have been a successful one. He had also brought about a level of much-needed peace within the Empire through successful reforms the system under which he had grown up would have been unable to deliver. However, in his deep immersion in matters of state during the closing years of his life, Caesar had neglected to think of the attitudes of his contemporaries. He failed to realise that no matter how great the need for peace and stability, there were still limits to the tolerance of the governing class. He saw Sulla's decision to resign the Dictatorship as foolish, but Sulla realised that it was still too early for Rome to be capable of making a peaceful shift to autocracy. It was ultimately for this misjudgment that Caesar was assassinated. It was considerably harder for the common man to align himself with this ideology, which had been incubated amongst the ranks of the aristocratic elite. Once his death was made known, a hysterical mood engulfed the city resulting in riots and attacks on the known conspirators houses. This was the manifestation of a bereaved people who had been deprived of a leader who had more than any other before him sought to address their grievances. He had naively believed—evidently along with many of the people whom he ruled—that ‘the benefits of his rule must overcome nostalgia for the past.’ His patriotism blinded him to the self-interest of a class, who even in circumstances in which selflessness was most desperately required, are the ones who can most appropriately be levelled with the charge of accepting no superior.

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